Red Sky at Morning (6 page)

At the end of the singing, which had become increasingly painful, Miss Rudd said, "Fight Song, everyone. Lots of spirit!" We all rose and sang "I'm a Crispin Boy."

It wasn't easy for me to follow the words, for I was sitting near Chango and his cronies, whose version of the song was
"Chinga chinga,
oh,
chinga chinga, chingadero chingadero. . . ."

As we left the room Chango kneed me in the tailbone so hard my legs almost buckled. "Jew gone look fahnny weeth your
chorizo
cot off," he whispered.

Steenie walked part of the way home with me, up the long fragrant hill to Camino Tuerto. "I think you'd better get a pistol," he said. "It won't kill Chango, of course; nothing can kill him but a wooden stake through the heart. But it might make some holes in some of his honchos."

"You must be exaggerating," I said.

"Can you get hold of some war-surplus hand grenades?"

I asked him about Marcia Davidson. "I know her father. St. Thomas's is the church we go to here, when we go. How come I never saw her around?"

"Church camp," he explained. "She spends every summer at a church camp in Colorado. She comes back with a tan and the scroungiest jokes I ever heard. This year she brought back a song called 'Ring Dang Do' that would make your hair turn white."

My mother was drinking sherry and listening to the radio when I got home. She'd become pale and slightly shaky in the few days since Dad had left.

"Did you have a nice time at school today?"

"Same old stuff," I said.

Dear Josh:
I haven't got a letter from your mother yet, but I assume you're behaving like a brave little lad and not blubbering and wetting your bed. I am in no danger as yet, other than the ever-present fear I may laugh so hard during indoctrination classes that I fall off my chair and injure myself.
The Navy, after having generously given me the rank of Lieutenant Commander, assumes that I am a stranger to salt water, and is re-teaching me all the fundamentals. (I was happy to learn this afternoon that the rear, or back, part of the boat, or ship, is known as the "stern," and that objects in that section are said to be "aft" or "abaft.") The officer who told us this, a young JayGee named Garrison, with a slight facial tic and a large behind, seemed very proud of his knowledge, and is eager for tomorrow's class to begin so that he can tell us the Navy names for right and left. I read the next chapter in the book, and have discovered they're called "starboard" and "port" but I'll pretend it's all a surprise when he breaks the news to us.
I believe I'm to be executive officer on a DE (destroyer escort), but I'll never make it at this rate. The Japanese and Germans will rule the seven seas by the time I've been taught the difference between a reef and a bowline, and President Roosevelt will be in a concentration camp with Eisenhower and Halsey and those other Jews.
Have you been getting long, intense love letters from little Corky, or has she fallen under the spell of Bubba Gagnier's heavy-handed charm? I don't want to sound patronizing, but I don't think 17 is the proper age for maintaining a love affair at a distance of 2,000 miles. Maybe you'll find some pretty little native girl—to your mother's horror—and begin taking instructions as a Catholic. Amadeo and Excilda have a daughter about your age, pretty as I recall. Still, don't let me push you into anything.
You're an adolescent, I realize, and not a very bright one, but you must keep an eye on your mother. She's away from her friends, and I don't think she's terribly fond of Sagrado, or the Southwest. She can, thank God, play pretty fair bridge, and that should keep her occupied, and she's out of the reach of some of her strange Mobile friends, who will remain nameless. I honestly couldn't think of a safer place for you and her than our house in Sagrado. There is still a possibility of bombing and shelling on the mainland, and Mobile's a fat sitting duck.
Please write me an occasional letter; use the FPO after December, and the Cambridge address until then. I will appreciate it if you don't use the rank "Admiral of the Ocean Sea" on the envelope. The Navy is deficient in humor.
Since there's no sailing in Sagrado, you might do some riding and hiking. Hiking is an old form of locomotion in which the leg muscles are employed. You may learn to enjoy it
Back to the books. This weekend Garrison is going to take us to Boston harbor to show us what a sea looks like, and next week we'll learn all about buoys.
Keep up the calisthenics,
Dad

Las Fiestas del Corazón Sagrado is an annual event, celebrating the town's escape from the famous smallpox epidemic of 1705 which scourged the countryside and reduced the Indian population to a manageable size. It comes in mid-September, a cool and beautiful time of year in the mountains, when the scent of burning piñon is in the air and the first snow lies on the peaks. I'd always had to return to Mobile before Fiesta.

Steenie and Marcia and I met on the Plaza, the main square of Sagrado, surrounded by the town's historical buildings—J. C. Penney's, the Sagrado State Bank, Romero's Pool Room, Wormser's Dry Goods and the New Shanghai Chinese-American Eats.

During the night a dozen or so painted stalls had sprung up in the Plaza, and the proprietors were selling native food. Excilda knows how to cook this sort of thing, which is fiery but good. The chefs on the Plaza fried it all in last year's grease, producing a nauseating smell.

"Let's get some
tacos,"
Marcia suggested. "With green chile and a Dr. Pepper."

"You'll get diarrhea," Steenie said. "As your medical advisor I strongly recommend the
burritos.
The worst they can do is constipate you."

"I'll get both," she said sunnily. "That way I'll come out even."

"Can't you two talk about something else?" I said. "I'm embarrassed all the time."

"Don't be ashamed of your body," Marcia said. "It's God's temple. Oh, look! Now that's what I call a real Fiesta costume!"

A conspicuously drunk native came toward us, almost unconscious, weaving along the flagstone path in a perfect zigzag, like a sloop tacking on a measured course. He wore no shirt, and someone had drawn concentric circles, like bulls-eyes, around his nipples in lipstick. He wore a policeman's cap and his fly was gaping open, revealing the head and front paws of what appeared to be a spaniel puppy, hanging out of the opening like a baby kangaroo. He halted in front of us and, dimly seeing Marcia, he removed the policeman's cap and bowed deeply.
"¿Cómo está, señorita?"
he said with dignity. "Don' tahtch the dog. He's a mean sonoma-beech."

Marcia made a grab for the puppy, who had long and silky ears aching to be scratched, but Steenie and I stopped her. The man with the ornament wobbled past us, having himself a hell of an old Fiesta.

"Couple of prudes," Marcia said.

We bought the
burritos,
having decided to come out even, and leaned against an ancient cottonwood near the center of the Plaza to watch the uneven procession of revelers. I don't know what went on in the thirties, but the war hadn't made much of an imprint, except for the tourists. Steenie, a veteran of many Fiestas, said they were missing.

Marcia said there wasn't enough hot sauce on her
burrito,
so I made a very sharp business proposition at one of the stalls for a nickel's worth of hot sauce. The
burritos
themselves were just flour tortillas wrapped around beans. In Mobile we caulk catboats with paste like that.

"Burritos
ordinarily give me gas," Marcia said, "if you know what I mean."

"I know what you mean," I said. "Be quiet about it."

"Bicarb," Steenie said. "Exercise."

"Clean thoughts," I said.

"I might as well be out with a pair of nuns," Marcia said, licking the hot sauce from her fingers. "Mmm, that's good! Burns going in and burns worse coming out."

"This is just like having a date with a Marine," I told Steenie, "but a Marine would watch his language."

"Talking isn't doing," Marcia said. "I'm still virgo intacta. Right, Doctor?"

"So you say," Steenie said. "I could be more certain after a fast pelvic, of course."

"Well,
I
couldn't be
more
certain," she said. "What do you think, Josh? Are the Cloyds virgo intacta?"

"What's it mean?" I whispered to Steenie.

"Cherry," he said, more loudly than necessary.

I started to turn red again, and then got hold of myself. "They don't talk as if they were. Not that you do."

"Definitely not," she said. The Cloyds were sisters, Velva Mae and Venery Ann, girls with pale dirty hair and four identical sharp breasts that they might have loaned to each other, like hats, while one pair was out being blocked. "I think Bucky Swenson's planking both of them."

We walked a few times around the Plaza, going generally against the crowd, and stopped once more to eat chicken
tacos
that had been boiled in what seemed to be sewage. I wanted to take them home and let Excilda cook native food for them the right way, but they enjoyed it.

They led the way north, across the Plaza and down Fillmore Avenue toward the edge of town. As we passed a convent, they proudly pointed out the cornerstone. Chiseled into granite were the words:

The Sisters of Our Lady of Succour
Laid April 14, 1873
By
The Most Reverend Francis X. Brady
Bishop of Corazón Sagrado

"Reading that always cheers me up for some reason," Marcia said.

On its north side, Sagrado ended suddenly at the base of some small brown hills. The dry earth was pocked with little holes where prairie dogs made their homes, and as we began to climb they poked their heads out and barked at us with a sound like "churp." The hills were steeper than they seemed. I started puffing from the altitude, and every ten steps or so I had to grab for the branch of a piñon tree and hold on. Steenie and Marcia didn't appear to mind the climb; they dodged and pranced on the incline, tossing pebbles at each other. Sometimes they stopped and waited for me when I fell down or halted to gasp, and said uncomplimentary things such as "Eeho-lay,
que
bum!"

We topped one rise and started down the other side. The town disappeared, and we seemed to be out in the country with no hint that there were any people for miles.
"Vamos al
dump," Steenie said.
"Al
dump," Marcia echoed.

We walked along a dried stream bed with high walls, and I lost my sense of direction immediately. The packed sand was easy to walk on and, with the climb ended for the time being, and the cool breeze blowing, it was pleasant. The stream bed turned, and as we turned with it a horrible choking odor surrounded us.

"Dead cow?" Steenie said.

Marcia stopped and sniffed the wind like a bird dog.
"Caballo,"
she said with finality. "Let's have a look."

I followed them around some more bends, and we emerged at the city dump, five acres or so of tin cans and bottles and old sofas with the stuffing coming out of them. Near the center of the refuse was a dead horse, surrounded by clouds of flies, giving off a visible green mist. I took my handkerchief out of my back pocket and tied it around my face.

"Would you say that horse is really dead," Marcia asked Steenie, "or it it playing possum?"

"Good question," Steenie said. "Shows an alert mind, a mind that doesn't accept the obvious. Josh boy, throw a rock at it and see if it wakes up."

"If I move one inch I'll get sick," I said. "Let's get out of here."

"First," said Steenie, "we have a little game. It's a little game we call
gallina."

"It means 'chicken,' " Marcia said.

"The object of the game is to walk, or run, to the horse, touch it with your hand, and walk, or run, back to the starting point, which is here."

"Can you hold your breath?"

"You
have
to hold your breath. Otherwise it's
mucho vomito."

"Mucho puko,"
said Marcia, with relish.

"Now, if you walk to and from the horse, it takes longer, naturally, and you have to hold your breath longer. If you run, you get out of breath faster. Either way it's rough. We've played the game since we were six or seven."

"Why do you play it at all?"

"A feeling of accomplishment," said Marcia. "I'll go first."

She stood still and took several deep, noisy breaths, exhaled about halfway and, crossing the fingers on both hands, began a slow and deliberate walk toward the horse. As she entered the blue-green cloud that hovered around the corpse she hesitated briefly, then plunged forward to her knees, put the palm of her hand on the horse's flank, stood up and whirled around. Her eyes were closed.

"No running," Steenie yelled. "You have to walk back." Marcia nodded her head and, with her eyes still closed, walked back, her face red from stored-up carbon dioxide.

"Good girl," Steenie said when she returned and let her breath whoosh out. "A true champion."

"He's a good one," Marcia said. "He's falling apart and there's maggots."

"Do you want to go next?" Steenie asked me.

"I'm not sure I want to go at all."

"If you don't go, you're
gallina.
If you get a reputation as
gallina
around here you might as well go back to Alabama."

"Nobody likes a
gallina,"
Marcia warned. "Girls won't neck with a
gallina."

"Dogs bark at
gallinas,"
Steenie continued.
"Gallinas
are a hissing and a byword."

"It goes into your file. You never live it down. You lose your voting rights."

"I'll go if you go," I told Steenie.

Steenie was a runner, not a walker. After the usual deep breaths he took off at a sprint, knelt at the horse and slapped him with both hands. He ran back even faster, and collapsed at our feet, taking huge staggering breaths.

"He's really a beauty. A textbook study in decomposition. It's days like this that really make the game worthwhile."